Well, the 20/20 piece on the "Manosphere” is obviously gonna be a trainwreck

Alyssa Pry is a journalist, creative writer and photographer in the New York City area. She is currently working as a production assistant for ABC 20/20. Her recent projects with 20/20 have included breaking news specials on the Japan tsunami and death of Osama Bin Laden, longer form pieces like Children of Hoarders, and celebrity profiles on Jennifer Hudson and Demi Lovato.

She has previously worked as a researcher for NBC News and has held internships at ABC, Harper’s Bazaar and NBC Universal. Her work has appeared on ABC, abcnews.com, gurl.com and abroad in The Prague Daily Monitor as well as other local publications. She is also the author of the blog workinggirlsmiling@wordpress.com

Alyssa graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism and sociology from New York University. Originally from New Jersey, Alyssa has traveled around Europe and hopes to someday work abroad.

Digital Associate Producer/Reporter for 20/20 and ABCNews.com at ABC News

Sales Associate at Abercrombie & Fitch

Past

Editorial Digital Intern at ABC News

Staff Writer at The Whitehead Envoy

Intern at Newsweek and The Daily Beast

Education

John C. Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton Hall University

Guys, she worked at Abercrombie & Fitch and she has a degree in Diplomacy!

Off to a promising start, no?

Deep in the underbelly of the Internet is a hidden corner known as the “Manosphere”— a collection of websites, Facebook pages and chat rooms where men vent their rage and spew anti-women rhetoric.

Deep in the underbelly, huh? Last I checked, A Voice for Men had an Alexa Ranking of 12 241. That puts them ahead of Zerlina Maxwell and her crew at feministing.com who come in at 17 098. Guess “feminism” is hidden deep in the underbelly, too?

Protected by the anonymity of the Internet, men feel free to post hateful and violent comments. Posts such as “I really wouldn’t mind shooting a [expletive] dead in the face, they are evil, all of them,” and “Women are the natural enemies of men” are commonplace on sites like “A Voice for Men,” a Manosphere blog run by Paul Elam.

I really wouldn’t mind shooting a [expletive] dead in the face, they are evil, all of them,”

UPDATE: Apparently this quote was taken from a 2010 article wherein Paul Elam used it as an example of something that would earn you Instant BanHammer! It’s an example of what is NOT acceptable.

Yep, only commenters at AVFM use anonymous or pseudonymous monikers. It’s never happened anywhere else on the internet, ever. And of the thousands of articles on AVFM, that’s the one they’re gonna highlight, is it? No relevant articles on issues like child custody or suicide or workplace deaths or boys struggling in school or male victims of sexual assault or male genital mutilation.

Elam told ABC News’ “20/20” that while he may not agree with some of the comments that are made on his site, he believes men are society’s victims and need a forum to vent.

Oh come on now Paul. You don’t agree with everyone all the time about everything? That’s so weird. It must be hard being human like that.

“There has been a change in the world, especially in the last 50 years. Women’s roles have changed drastically,” he told “20/20.” “What a lot of us in this area find is that men’s roles have not changed very much. Many find now that they have to react.”

Men’s roles haven’t changed at all. Yoo hoo! Reporters! Ask him a question about that! Go ahead! Ask him what he means! Dig into that topic! No really! Go for it!

Or, you know, just focus on what you’ve already decided is the issue.

That’s what you call “objectivity”.

Elam explained that men leave these comments in the Manosphere to get people to listen.

Which is quite possibly the entire point of all communication everywhere?

Just a guess.

“It’s … very much designed to get someone like you to sit down and ask me questions,” he told 20/20’s Elizabeth Vargas. “We are addressing a group of problems that this society ignores.”

Elam said institutions like marriage and corrupt family courts have become dangerous for men.

“Marriage has become unsafe ground for men, because we have corrupt family courts that practice bias against men and fathers routinely,” he told 20/20. “And men are waking up to this, that they don’t get a fair deal.”

Okay, this is better. We’re actually talking about men and some specific issues again.

Oops. Spoke to soon.

Let’s make it all about women again!

While Elam told “20/20” that his site does not promote violence or hate toward women, some of his writing appears otherwise. In a post on his website, Elam wrote that women on welfare are “little more than thinly disguised layabouts.”

Wow. That’s your example of “hate”? Women on welfare are lazy? Yep. First time in human history that sentiment has ever been expressed. Clearly, this new manosphere thing is taking hate to a new level.

Elam claimed it’s not anger but satire and social commentary. “What I do is reflect and study what the attitude is in the culture,” he told “20/20.” “I am not creating the problem, I am documenting some of it.”

Fuck Their Shit Up is satire. The rest is social commentary. Some of that commentary is bound to be angry. Some of it is despairing. Some of it is sarcastic. Some is really judgy and bitchy.

Wait, you mean ALL the men are humans, capable of the full range of human feelings and emotions?

But experts like Mark Potok, from the Southern Poverty Law Center, believe this rhetoric is problematic. “The Manosphere is an underworld of so-called men’s rights groups and individuals on the Internet, which is just fraught with really hard-line anti-woman misogyny,” Potok told “20/20.”

Wait a second. Anti-woman misogyny? Is there another kind I’m not aware of? Calling out misandry is not misogyny any more than supporting civil rights for Hispanic workers means you hate gay people. Those are mutually exclusive topics. Pay a little closer attention, and you might notice that what the manosphere criticizes is a particular ideology: feminism. People who support equal rights for men do not hate women.

Some of them ARE women!

And when a woman is on the receiving end of this misogyny, the Manosphere is unflinching in its attacks.

Yeah, and when feminists disagree with something someone in the manosphere writes, they NEVER threaten sexual violence or mutilation. Ask Matt Forney about that one.

Miss Poppy Leigh ‏@SoFullOfSht 29 Sep

@CozworthGrind I really hope he meets someone who chops his dick off and feeds it back to him in his food

“Women who are targeted by these sites get a tidal wave of hate mail with rape threats and death threats,” Jaclyn Friedman, founder of Women, Action & the Media, told “20/20.”

All my best death and rape threats are from other women!

Anita Sarkeesian, a media critic and blogger, learned this the hard way after campaigning on Kickstarter to raise funds for a web series on the roles of women in video games. The attacks from the Manosphere were swift.

“It was … thousands of people coming after me,” Sarkeesian told “20/20.” “Threats of rape, threats of death, threats of violence,” she said.

Possibly because they were really pissed you basically stole money?

“They would Photoshop and manipulate pornographic images and put my face on them,” Sarkeesian said. Her fellow gamers even designed a special video game about her named “Beat the [expletive] Up.”

“Players were invited to click on the screen, and an image of me would become increasingly battered and bruised,” Sarkeesian said.

Oh my god, are you saying that people beat up other people in games on the internet? Shut up! I totally don’t believe you. Gamers only play with kittens and herd sheep and grow vegetables. There is no such thing as a violent video game.

Friedman was also the subject of a cyber attack after campaigning on Facebook to remove photos and groups that promoted hate speech toward women.

Right. But all the images of beheaded men on wedding cakes and women slapping men were A-OK? How about people were disgusted by your hypocrisy?

“I got emails and tweets and posts on Facebook that say, ‘You are disgusting. You are fat. No one would ever want you. You should be raped,” Friedman said.

Yeah, yeah. I get those too. From my feminist fans. I especially love it when comments come in back to back. “You’re an anorexic bitch and I hope you get killed.” “You’re such a fat bitch you would be lucky to get raped”.

Both comments from women.

Friedman said the Manosphere is not satire as Elam claimed, but a space for people to cause damage to women.

Can you point to that damage? What damage has the Manosphere done to women? Did you wittle feelings get hurt?

Boo hoo hoo. I feel so bad for you.

“If you look at what they actually do, it’s all hateful rhetoric,” she told “20/20.”

Sponsored links

Actually, the comments seem active. And, yes, a lot of quite calm and reasonable commentary by AVfM readers and authors.

James

Ah. Must’ve been my computer. My bad.

Micha Elyi

Let me see if I’ve got ABC’s story straight. A pair of ABC reporterette types are all self-righteously huffy on-air that a few commenters on obscure web sites are talking about doing pretty much what Lorena Bobbit and Mary Winkler actually did to their husbands and got widespread sympathy from –even cheering for– by the Establishment Media. And from this we’re supposed to conclude the usual feminist party line that females are victims and men are victimizers.

Oh well, there’s a reason teevee is called the boob tube (beyond the fact that most viewers are females).

Of course! Pro-woman “misogyny” is the kind targeted to get a woman who has marinated in the feminist stew of the last 40 years to wake up and face the lies, after which it just becomes “pro-woman” without any taint of misogyny.

Anit-woman misogyny is the kind spewed by feminists toward women who insufficiently toe the feminist line.

I watched the preview and Vargas was clearly hostile to Elam; her expression was as if Elam had just farted directly into her face. She seemed especially incredulous at the suggestion that family courts are corruptly biased against men. I’m sure Vargas can’t get her little head around the idea because as a seasoned, objective journalist, she sees that bias as the right and normal state of affairs.

This will definitely be a hit piece. They’ll completely ignore the issues about men and focus only on the reaction of women. After all, the reaction of men and men’s issues are of little importance. Especially if they’re being mean to the ladies. Look how they framed the narrative: the Manosphere is unflinching in it’s attacks. Women are “targeted” by these sites. The evidence? Karkeesian was “attacked” by the gaming community. Uh, wait a second…are gamers and tech nerds part of the Manosphere? I don’t know, and this piece won’t say. The Friedman chick tried to censor Facebook and got “cyber-attacked” with emails and tweets! The horror! And it must have been coming from “unflinching Manosphere sites” because… Uh, well…Because! [Don’t ask for evidence of a connection. What, are you a hater! You Anti-woman Misogynist!]

I see the day not too far distant when merely mentioning rape in an email sent to a woman is the exactly equivalent to rape rape…

actually, there’s a high-clarity form… fourth press, or something like that, that DOES NOT alter it’s chemical formula until you hit about 400 degrees. it’s considerably cheaper than regular olive oil, but doesn’t have the flavor.

Of course, it is not good for much commercial frying (Most places use 450 oil), but home frying and ‘pan frying’ rarely exceeds 350 degrees. (fry daddies and other consumer portable deep fat fryers are legally limited to 375 degrees because the insulation to make those ‘safe’ at higher temperatures are prohibitively expensive) and generally stovetop frying never ever goes about 400 degrees because above 400, even clarified butter tends to start smoking.

Seems the underworld will always remain the ….. well, badlands filled with outlaws.

Troy

The Manosphere is an underworld of so-called men’s rights groups

So men don’t have rights? Or is it that men’s issues are not as important? Oh wait, I get it. All humans are equal, but women are more equal.

Women who are targeted by these sites get a tidal wave of hate mail with rape threats and death threats,” Jaclyn Friedman, founder of Women, Action & the Media, told “20/20.”

A tidal wave I tell you. A tidal wave!!!! I don’t think these idiots understand that their histrionic, hyperbolic language makes them look like, well, idiots.

I love how that feminist pervert language. Gary Ridgway was a misogynist. Ike Turner was a misogynist. OJ Simspon was a misogynist. That so few men would knowingly, intelligently,and voluntarily fuck Lindy West, doesn’t make us mysogynist.

From the article, and the promo, I got the distinct impression that 20/20 is going to try to equate the “manosphere” with MRA sites only. Well, it fits their narrative better that way: manosphere=hate.

Then Roosh tweeted: I was interviewed. For 30 minutes they asked me about rape. lol We’ll see whether they include other segments beyond MRAs, but it seems like their narrative is still intact…

feeriker

This will definitely be a hit piece.

Which is why I at first would have counseled Paul against appearing on the show. OTOH, I started thinking a bit about this and it ultimately occurred to me that 1) it’s unlikely that anyone who puts any stock in anything an MSM “news” show like 20/20 says is smart enough to process any form of real truth (that is, it doesn’t matter what Paul says or doesn’t say or how ABC distorts it; the mumbling morons who are their primary audience won’t grasp it anyway), and 2) no matter how they chop the interview up, it will still only serve to show the world what utter mental midgets MSM hacks like Lizzie Vargas and her barista-degreed feminist comradettes-in-propaganda really are.

I might not be able to catch the program when it first airs, but I’m sure I’ll be able to catch up later. If nothing else, the aftermath of it will give Paul and the AVfM editorial staff many years worth of material to work with.

Paul is pretty much a cam whore that sold out to the egalitarians a couple of years ago. There was NO chance he would pass on a public appearance.
Price, however, refused to be interviewed.

Essentially, at this point, the MSM is ‘desperate’ to have a public figure to try and scapegoat. It is ultimately doomed to failure, though, because we have proven again and again that we are FAR too decentralized to give a flying fart about someone who claims to be a ;manosphere leader’ getting trashed… Even Warren Farrell freely admits that he is a quote source rather than any sort of mrm ‘leader’

Basically, the ‘Manosphere’ is what anonymous WISHES it were… a decentralized, powerful individualist group with coherent and understood goals.

The core of the manosphere is individualism. And we will accept nothing short of complete and unconditional surrender to reality. No compromise, no mediation, no negotiation.

We respect those who create content, and host our discussions. We even respect them when we radically disagree with their methodology or conclusions. But the fact is, these sites could all dry up and disappear tomorrow, and it would only increase the number of people looking for the truth.

Or, to quote Ben, “If you strike me down you will only make me more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”

Jay in DC

Except that anonymous actually you know… does shit. Real stuff with a real world impact. What do MRA activists actually do? They bitch on messageboards… effecting no actual change whatsoever. So I wouldn’t be too proud of our “accomplishments”. Sure, there is a place for just expounding truth out to the masses but at some point you are just not moving forward if you are behind a screen too cowed into submission to act.

What, you want my real name? Sure, my name is Michael Murphy, I live in Salt Lake city, right on the east side of state street. I don’t particularly want to get trolled or spammed or drive-by shot, but I am not hiding my identity simply because I am frightened by the truth or even by responses to my words, I simply don’t want to get spammed by advertisers and useful idiots with an axe to grind. Anonymity is a breakwater, not a hiding place.

Would you like to know what I did today? I saw a ‘domestic violence’ advertisement surrounded by a couple of thousand white flags planted in the ground near my house. The sign said “These white flags are for all the people Utah DV shelters have helped”
To the bottom I added the words, “The red flags denote all the male victims of domestic violence that Utah DV shelters have helped.”. Of course, there was not a single red flag in evidence, since there are no domestic violence shelters in the United states that assist male victims of domestic violence past the age of puberty. Despite the fact that there is lots of evidence that at least a third of all domestic violence occurs towards men.

Do NOT mistake lack of attention by the main stream media towards men’s activism as ‘proof’ of it’s inactivity. The ONLY time men’s activism receives anything close to public attention is when it’s something like Anders Breyvik.

Jay in DC

Thank you Michael Murphy… you are beacon of hope, in a vast sea of darkness and inequity. I hope you can step it up for ALL of us. Not kidding… but like I said though anonymous hide behind the internet they have accomplished the following (short list). 1) hacking the DOJ, 2) hacking credit card companies, 3) Hacked the entire internet presence of hard line Shia Iran. That is the SHORT list.

Long list– they’ve hacked virtually every goverment’s website in the modern world. From soft ass pussy states like Sweden up into disgusting hard line states like Iran, Sudan, and wait for it… wait for it.. this will shock any westerner without knowledge. I S R A E L. Yes, your JEW overlords control the States by and large. How sad for us…

JB, a request. Publish the rape threats you get. Make a post you update with them or something (I fully understand not publishing them in the comment thread where they are made). I disbelieve that you get a significant number of threats, just as I disbelieve Anita and all of the other feminists that claim to be oppressed by threats. While I’m predisposed to side with you, and already believe most of what you publish before you even write it. This is not good cause to hold you to a different standard of proof than what I hold others to.

I fully believe she gets the hate mail and comments she describes. But, too, would love to see at least one unmoderated thread where the feminist haters get to reveal themselves. Hilarity usually ensues…

Really……. you know fucking people like you are those that should be shot and pissed on but not only that while ur awake have ur extremities torn from ur bod

Here’s a lovely one from someone who apparently doesn’t realize I can pinpoint a local fairly precisely with an IP address, especially in a sparsely populated area.

le sigh

Tyler

I think you should present evidence of these threats (when you can locate the individual) to the proper local authorities. I agree that the threat isn’t credible, and it’s kind of silly to stoop to the level of thin-skinned feminists who would certainly report physical threats when they could. But hear me out:

A buddy of mine once made the point that all rules/laws/etc should be enforced without exception. This is not because those laws are just, but because in doing so people will demand that the unjust laws be repealed or reformed.

I don’t fully agree with his idea for implementation, but he does have a point: if you make sure feminists get the same consequences men would get for equivalent comments, then maybe in the future those feminists won’t support the laws that allow for those consequences.

Anyway, just my two cents.

John

First amendment generally lets people say what they want. Telling someone you hope they die is typically not a threat.

I doubt that. The First Amendment generally is a defense in court against the US Government coming after you in court for something annoying to the government that you said. And even if it’s a successful defense, getting dragged into court is gonna cost you serious bucks to make a defense.

Then there’s the private suits that can be brought against you for which the First Amendment is not much of a defense. I hear from trial lawyers again and again that anybody can file suit against anybody for anything. Costly suits that even if you win in court, you lose by every other measure. Just look around you. See all those people the New York Times treats unkindly. And the NYT just one spot on the commanding heights of the culture occupied by the Establishment Media.

I’d like to believe that, save for that idiot kid that is facing years in prison for a joke FB post. I’m also a veteran of family court, and ‘wishing harm on someone’ gets taken as a direct threat, well, at least when the recipient of the message is female.

My ex got away with all kinds of crap, from false claims of abuse, to calling CPS with false claims of child abuse and neglect, to outright impersonating a US marshal and threatening a bartender with arrest, in front of a cop, only to have the (female) A-DA drop charges with a (female) pro-bono attorney (who used to work with the A-DA) in front of a (female) criminal judge. Said (female) A-DA is now a criminal judge. Guess what, she doesn’t send too many women to the slammer. – At any rate, I’m pretty sure that feminists who drop thinly veiled threats and ‘fantasy wishes’ for your brutal demise are well aware of the female accountability discount, they feel pretty safe doing it, yet are anxiously awaiting the chance to play victim on anything they can blow out of proportion.

I’d be interested to see the results of turning it over to the police, or what your local cyber-crime division would require as firm evidence. (There’s also the inconvenience of an incompetent or petty investigator confiscating your hardware and demanding access codes to your accounts.)

Regardless – thanks for your work!

Tyler

I get your point about not violating your agreement about emails, and I applaud the integrity. But….how about you just change the agreement, so you can post future threats?:

Your email address will not be published, unless you make comments wishing me or my family physical harm. In that case, I will publish your address and encourage people to write it on walls in truck stop bathrooms.

Yeah, it’s all mostly a moot point, trolls gonna troll, but it would be good for a laugh.

JB, I get a lot of comments like that too, always from other women. I have never once been threatened by a man from the supposedly violent manosphere, but feminists have told me they hope I am raped with a rusty pipe and fantasize about hitting me in the face with a frying pan. A commenter at Manboobz once wrote that she hoped all my children died. Charming.

I’ll clarify something: no one has ever said “I’m going to rape you”, likely owing to the fact that I have yet to have a human with the correct equipment threaten me.

That’s very interesting. And here I was thinking that only men were capable of that sort of violence towards women/other human beings. After all, that’s what the Feminists keep telling me. Don’t tell me they are wrong??? I refuse to believe its possible!!!

I have a feeling that the reason why you’ve never had a man threaten you in this way is that all the male Feminists are either too immasculated to even threaten violence or too heavily indoctrinated to even consider hitting a woman, no matter how “evil” or dangerous they perceive them to be.

“People say shit on the internet they would never dream of saying IRL.”

I say the same things IRL that I say on the internet 🙂 Then again, I am ‘old school’. one of those old bastards that hates ‘leetspeak’ and abbreviations like ‘irl’

of course, at 6’2″ and 280 lbs, with a prison record and tattoos, very few people argue with me the way some people do on the net. Perhaps the tattoos imply that angry lesbian feminists might not be as safe from harm for getting in my face as they have come to expect from most of today’s feminised men.

I believe, only once, has an angry feminist tried to confront me directly… It was at a gay rally in DC, where a lesbian screamed ‘What, is your own kind not good enough for you?” at my current (very attractive) pet (perhaps the collar pissed her off?) in the DC subway escalators at Woodley Park.

I have NEVER seen a group of Angry lesbians scatter as quickly as this one did when I jumped the barricade and the stairs in between the up and down escalators. My pet and I both had a good long laugh afterwards, as she knew full well that I was HOPING that one of them touched me so I could get very very intimate with them.

Jones

You’re right to be cynical — I wouldn’t expect much from hack American journos.

America runs off its best journos to work with British media until they get a better deal elsewhere. Look at what Glenn Greenwald has done over the past couple of years.

If the standing joke is that anyone good at CNN could leave for BBC, and anyone great at BBC could leave for al-Jazeera, then where could anyone at ABC move on to?

The question, of course, is rhetorical since the answer is the null set, unless you count reversions, in which case I suppose we can look forward to Piers Morgan getting posted to ABC sometime soon.

Otherwise, no offence meant to the Aussies who have their own ABC, which is somewhere you could move on to, rather than leave …

He bluntly utilizes every sort of twisted media dodge possible… his attempts to twist facts and flat-out lie are so obvious and transparent that it really helps give even uninformed viewers a good dose of ‘how to spot fake media’

Frankly, what is keeping his show afloat is the secondary market of sound bytes busting on his idiot journalism. Virtually everyone that watches him is doing so only to record it and tear it apart on youtube.

Frankly, I think that he should be re-marketed as a comedy show… get him a good writer for an intial self-flagellating ‘starting bit’ like Leno, and then let him run what is almost a parody of itself… The man takes abuse, getting shown up by virtually every conservative guest he calls, like a champ. He has the makings of great self-deprecatory humor (with good jokewriters)

“I just flew in from the coast, and the TSA loved my show so much that I am pretty sure I ‘got lucky’ a dozen times. My proctologist tells me I should be fine, and the metal detector came out without major surgery… all it needed was a little elbow grease.”

All I ever hear Piers do is move from one question to the next, and each question is some obvious setup for a logical fallacy. He never addresses a question, he just tries to keep people answering questions so he can seem like he has all the answers.

Who in their right mind sends two innocent, wonderful, frail, strong and independent mid-20s women to write a piece telling millions of legal-battle hardened and dating-world-battle hardened men that their free speech w.r.t. their perspective on mens issues is unwelcome?

Oh right, a movement that likes to portray itself as a victim.

Troy

An update.

I was reading the comments section at ABC News (right….news) website and, IMHO, most of them are calling these two ladies on their hit piece.

RE: the comments.

It doesn’t surprise me at all that the most violent messages are from, apparently, women. A fact that will probably never broadcast on a major television network. I hope they don’t deter you from your work.

” Protected by the anonymity of the Internet, men feel free to post hateful and violent comments.”

This article is unmistakably part of a larger and concentrated effort of powerful lobbyist groups, not just feminist ones, to outlaw online anonymity. It’s happening, and it has been happening for years. And ultimately they will win. Make no mistake about that. Feminism is set to doom the entire human race.

I really must wonder if the two “reporters” feel as strongly about the right of women to post hateful and violent remarks. Like Anita Sarkeesian personally endorsing a fanfic where she kills a game studio head.

I wouldn’t get too bent out of shape by the 20/20 hit piece. It will have the opposite effect of what they are hoping for. Many men (and women) who never heard of AVFM before will want to check it out to see what all the fuss is about. (Although there will be a certain percentage of blue-pill men who will dutifully stay away “proving” to themselves that they are not misogynists.) A good number of those new viewers will start reading some of the articles which will resonate and make them question all the party-line drivel they have been fed for their whole lives. If I was to make one suggestion to Paul Elam it would be to have a short “pinned” article for new viewers that tells what the site is about and what the important issues are, and suggestions for further reading. Much like Athol Kay has on MMSL.